


A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

by betheflame



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Back Together, It's Compliant ISH, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 21:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30078834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame/pseuds/betheflame
Summary: In which Steve can't breathe with the lost possibilities, and may be pushing BARF to its limits.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 124
Collections: STB Bingo: Round One





	A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

**Author's Note:**

> I was on POTS a few weeks ago asking for some art prompts and jacobby DELIVERED. I'm so honored to give some words to this incredible art. Please head to the [tumblr](https://jacobbyart.tumblr.com/post/645769958839779328/1-past-the-blood-and-bruise-past-the-curses-and) and give it some love. 
> 
> I tagged this "Chose Not To Warn" because Tony is dead in this. Just flat out, up front, Endgame ended how it did, but Steve obviously didn't stay with Peggy, and some elements of canon have been bent to my will. I view this ending as happy, but some may call it bittersweet. If you are here for your typical Flameyfluff, please mind yourself that I go a little heavier in this one. 
> 
> Thanks to Ferret for the beta, POTS for the cheering, and jacobby for the art. 
> 
> Oh, and this is a fill for "reopening an old wound" in STB Bingo.

* * *

_No one teaches you what to do_  
_When a good man hurts you_  
_And you know you hurt him too_ \- Taylor Swift, Happiness

* * *

“Again,” Steve growled.

“Stevie,” Bucky said softly, “you understand that all of them will end up that way.”

“I said ‘again,’” Steve repeated. “FRIDAY, give me scenario 462c.”

“Captain,” she began hesitantly.

“FRIDAY, not now,” Steve snapped. “462c.”

He heard Bucky sigh and Sam call him something truly terrible, but he didn’t care. He’d chase every single dream he had if it gave him ten more minutes with Tony.

He closed his eyes in the BARF chamber as FRIDAY had most of the room fade from view. Soon, he could feel the sand beneath his toes and hear the ocean waves. He smelled coconuts - but fake coconuts, like suntan lotion, and the faint smell of…

Fingers wound through his hand. “You coming back to bed, handsome?”

Steve turned his head, and opened his eyes to see his favorite view in the world - Tony’s face, hair rumpled from sleep or sex or both, crinkle lines coming from his eyes, and a small smile on his face. Not a smirk, not a full smile - an in between that seemed to only exist for Steve.

He felt every piece of tension in his body relax. “Sorry, babe, was just enjoying the sunset for a minute.”

Tony pulled himself into Steve’s side and wound his hand around Steve’s waist, which was when Steve realized he was naked. Which made sense, since they were at the Shellhead House on Basque Key. Shellhead was their engagement gift from Pepper, and they’d designed the whole house themselves, hell, they’d designed the whole island themselves. The only place in the world where they got to be Tony and Steve. JARVIS was on complete emergency-only protocols, and the only tech allowed was electricity and a television that only got streaming movie services so they could catch up on things they missed while saving the world. It was messy - cluttered with the debris of a life crafted between them - and none of their friends had ever been.

Shellhead was paradise.

Steve turned to kiss the top of Tony’s head and focused on savoring the physicality of the man next to him. He was warm, and breathing, and Steve’s.

Steve shook his head slightly, trying to clear the other image that flew into his mind. BARF was powerful, but not more powerful than Steve’s eidetic memory. For both super soldiers, they had to fully focus on the memory to get the most out of the process because their mental overrides were so strong. Bucky had given in fully - rewriting every memory he could as he and Shuri and Steve and Sam worked to rewire the trauma that had taken up residence in Bucky’s body. When Steve had said he wanted to use the process to get over Tony, Bucky had been skeptical.

_“But you don’t want to get over Tony,” Bucky said with a quizzical expression. “The point of this all was never to get over him, it was for you two to be together. We fucking fought a war so you two could be together.”_

_“We lost a war because we were apart,” Steve said. “We lost years and hundreds of thousands of lives throughout the universe because -”_

_“We’re not doing this again,” Sam interrupted. “BARF can help you process your grief, but it cannot help you get over Tony unless you want to. Pepper said he never got over you, he just learned to live without you. Make that your goal, pal, and it may work.”_

Steve had catalogued every memory he had with Tony that he wanted to re-live. The plan was that if he re-lived them all, they’d override the images and conversations he couldn’t get out of his head. The moments where he could have made different decisions that no amount of time in BARF could rectify. He wanted to hold onto the joy.

“What are you thinking about?” Tony asked quietly.

That was the other amazing part about Shellhead House. Tony unwound himself there, let the tension that coiled his body and brain bleed out until he was present. It worked for only hours at a time, but everytime it did, it took Steve’s breath away. The trust that Tony placed in him to do that was even more sacred in retrospect.

Steve knew the answer to Tony’s question before he answered it. He’d done this scenario a few times. “Bucky.”

Tony tensed, and Steve cursed himself. But if he answered this part differently, he couldn’t answer the other parts the way he needed to.

“If he’s out there -”

“He is, Tony, I know it was him,” Steve said resolutely.

“I know you do, babe,” Tony said soothingly. “But that was six months ago. That’s my point. He broke his programming that day, but how long did that break last? Was it permanent? Is he Bucky right now, wherever he is, or the Soldier?”

“He’s probably both,” Steve confessed.

“Most likely,” Tony said. “Is there anything I can do to distract you from him?”

And this is where it had started to go wrong.

All of Steve’s mistakes, all of his misjudgements, the entire Thanos Incident…

This moment.

In truth, Steve should have said, _“Nothing, Tony, but that doesn’t mean you’re less than Bucky. I love you both in ways I can’t find English for, but on parallel and separate tracks. Loving him and loving you make me who I am and so I need you to help me find him.”_

What did Steve did say, and the words that came out his mouth this time were, “I’m sure you can think of something.”

Within the recreation, he lost himself in Tony’s skin, in Tony’s tongue, in the sensations of sucking, and biting, and holding, and thrusting, and screaming. He lost himself in the body that would never be his again, and when the memory was over, and FRIDAY pulled the plug, he curled into a ball on the sterile floor and wept.

* * *

“It’s been fourteen weeks,” Sam said to Bucky.

“And we’ll watch him do it for fourteen more years if that’s what it takes,” Bucky replied.

“I have his shield, Bucky, and we promised him that we’d pick up the cause. Sitting here and watching him flagellate himself on the memories of his mistakes is not picking up the cause,” Sam snapped.

Bucky rolled his lips over his teeth. He could feel the bits of Winter that he’d intentionally kept nipping at his brain, begging to let his instincts take over so that he wouldn’t feel the anguish in Sam’s voice or feel his own. But Bucky had learned a lot about being human and he knew he needed this pain to ground him.

“He’s not progressing,” Sam said. “He’s just… circling.”

“Have you talked to Shuri or Pete lately?”

Sam groaned. “Fuck, we have to go to Queens don’t we?”

“Eh, I’ll go alone, you coward. You cover the thing Hill texted about this morning, and I’ll go see Sir Sticks-A-Lot.”

“Deal,” Sam smirked.

* * *

“There is a multiverse,” Peter said, excitement in his voice. “Mr. Stark cracked the code we needed to access it with his time travel algorithm, but the issue now is how to activate his code without Pym Particles or Doctor Strange.”

“So it’s likely there is somewhere in this fucking weird world where Tony is alive?”

Peter nodded. “Based on what Doctor Strange said after I came back from the Mysterio thing, there are infinite scenarios in each universe, but also infinite universes. Traveling within our own universe messes with the timelines, but traveling to other ones messes with everything.”

“So, Tony is alive somewhere but Steve can never know?” Bucky clarified, eating a cheese stick he’d stolen from May and Peter’s fridge.

“Well, Mr. Stark might not be how we know him in other universes. He could be a talent agent, or a single dad, or a prince in some of them,” Peter said. “Our Mr. Stark is gone“--The kid paused to swallow tears that Bucky knew still threatened whenever Peter talked about his mentor - “but even if others aren’t, they’re not our Mr. Stark.”

“I come all the way out to Queens and you tell me that Stevie’ll just be in pain forever?”

“No, because there is another option,” Peter said. “It’s highly experimental, even wilder than when he went to return all the stones, but if anyone’s body can handle it, it’s Captain Rogers’.”

“You know we were serious when we told you to knock it off with the titles, right, kid?”

Peter blushed. He was about to answer when his bedroom window slid open and MJ stepped through. “Oh, hey, Buck.”

Bucky nodded at MJ. “See, she can do it.”

“You doing the creepy title thing again?” MJ addressed her boyfriend with a kiss and a scold.

“It’s polite!”

“May!” MJ called. “Can Peter call people by their first names if he has their permission?”

“Been telling him that since he was twelve,” May called back. “Good luck!”

Bucky snorted and noticed how red Peter’s ears were. Something he’d learned in therapy that week flashed across his brain. “Hey, kid?”

Peter looked at him with curiosity.

“This is what love sounds like sometimes,” Bucky continued with a wink. “Now, tell me what we can do about Stevie, because I don’t know if anyone has died from pining for someone, but I don’t feel like finding out.”

* * *

“Why do I feel like I saw this in a video game once?” Clint said from his perch.

“Because you did,” Shuri replied. “It’s where I got the idea.”

Steve was torn between hysterical laughter and gut-wrenching sobs. What Shuri was talking about wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be.

“So Stevie goes to sleep,” Bucky said, “and then you do BARF shit in his sleep?”

Shuri’s face lit up the screen in front of all of them. She pulled up some images to show them - Bruce poked at some questions, and so did Peter. Steve let the chatter wash over him until Clint said something interesting.

“If this works for Steve, can we all do it for Nat?”

Shuri’s face fell, and Steve knew the answer. “Steve or Bucky can, I think, but the rest of your cellular structure is -”

“No,” Bruce interrupted. “You can’t. And Steve shouldn’t either.”

“Why not?” Peter said. “The science -”

“The science is experimental!” Bruce yelled. “He goes into this and what if he never comes back? What if he finds Tony and they have their whatever and then Tony moves on and Steve stays there? Tony never designed BARF to work with subconscious states!”

“Which is why I took Stark’s tech and made it better,” Shuri pronounced. “I can bring Captain Rogers back. The question will be whether he wants to.”

Steve’s head shot up, and he peered at her. “Of course I’ll want to come back. This is no different than when I said goodbye to Peggy.”

The entire room stifled laughter, and Steve sighed. “Fine, okay, it’s different.”

“Can I have the room?” Bucky said firmly, in a tone that no one would argue with. When the room was clear, Bucky winked at Shuri. “I’ll call you back in a few, Your Highness.”

“Only you make that title sound like an insult, White Boy,” she said with a smirk, and her screen went dark.

“Steve,” Bucky said quietly when it was just the two of them. “You have a choice, just like you did with Pegs.”

“When Pegs and I danced,” Steve replied, “we both knew what it was about. We both knew I’d be leaving as soon as it was done. Daniel was sitting right there, for fucks’ sake,” Steve said. “I only stayed in that world because I thought I could make some changes.”

“I know, pal,” Bucky said. They’d done this work already - how Steve had tried to get everyone to believe him that Bucky was alive, that he’d done his best to watch over Tony as Howard’s friend to see if he could keep Tony safe, that he’d marched with Dr. King… and the world still went on the way it had when Steve was in the ice. So Steve had come back to their year, having lived 60 years in the past. He still looked like he was in his mid-30s, and Dr. Strange had promised to look into the aging process of time travel and the serum, but Steve had honestly stopped caring.

“All that talk about how one person can change the world,” Steve said with a sniff as tears started to fall. “Turns out, I’m not enough.”

“You were always a man out of time, Steve,” Bucky said. “Shuri and Doctor Strange and Blonde Lady who scares me, they all said the same thing. You changed individual timelines, and you saved people, and you loved people, but this timeline knew what it needed and it worked against you. You were always Sisyphus, and now you get to rest, pal.”

“I miss him so much,” Steve said, giving into the sobs. Bucky held him, as Bucky always did.

“You keep trying to change the past, Steve, why don’t you change your future instead?”

Steve snorted - a sloppy sound that was wet with grief. “I don’t like living without him.”

“You’re pretty shitty at it,” Bucky replied, and Steve shoved him.

“If I do this, and choose to stay -”

“Then you choose to stay and I’ll miss you a lot, but I’ll be glad you’re happy,” Bucky said evenly. “Should I call Shuri back?”

Steve nodded. “Don’t tell anyone else.”

“This is all between you and him, pal. I’ll just say you decided to try and then if you stay, you stay. I’m sure Shuri will know somehow.”

Steve nodded, and Bucky asked FRIDAY to get Shuri back on the line. Steve told her he wanted to try, and her expression turned serious. “And I’m assuming that you may not want to come back?”

Steve nodded. “If wherever he is, he lets me stay, I’ll stay.”

“This is part magic, what we’re doing,” Shuri said. “It’s ancient, and I’ve been working with the traditional healers and witches here in Wakanda to balance this all correctly. There’s something poetic about helping the human science experiment from before the internet reunite with the futurist in an alternative plane of existence.”

“Not a poem I want to read, Your Highness, but sure,” Bucky said with a laugh. “You need my boy there?”

Shuri nodded. “We’ll be ready.”

* * *

Three weeks later, after Steve had done everything in New York he wanted to, and spent as much time with Bucky as possible, he sat in a chamber in the Wakandan palace. Pepper had assured him that whatever Tony chose was fine with her, and that she wanted her husband to have rest and joy. She made a few jokes about joining them later, which Steve took with good humor.

Shuri affixed the monitors to his body, and narrated as she went. _This monitors your heart rate, this will make sure your blood pressure is okay, and I have enough data from when you’re a horny boy from BARF that I’ll know if your heart rate is raised for those reasons._ He was a ball of nerves - Shuri explained there was no real way to let Tony know he was coming. Cheating the afterlife was a specific magic that had only been attempted once before, in a forest glen in Scotland.

That time had been about choice, too.

In all the years he’d been apart from Tony, that was the truth that had seared itself to him the strongest. Love was a lot of things - it was a verb that was best expressed through justice and kindness, through patience and fierce passion. But fundamentally, it was a choice. It was a choice to trust intentions, to empathize, to swallow your own point of view sometimes and agree to the other person’s. It looked different in every relationship he was in, but it was holy in all of themeuq.

He’d loved Tony for so long, that he forgot the power of actively choosing to do so. He forgot that it was work, still, and that the choice was the point.

They’d never gotten a chance to make public vows - two weeks after that weekend on Basque Key, Nat had gotten a lead on Bucky and then the world changed. He’d never mailed his ring back, and Nat had often looked at him with exasperated pity in his eyes. She’d thrown him the burner phone and glared at him. Every time he put it down instead of using it, she’d curse at him in Russian, and then in Sokovian which she told him she learned entirely because she was tired of calling him a “fucking cockwitted idiot” in only two languages.

He slipped his ring back on his finger - it had lived in his pocket like a talisman for a long time - and observed his outfit. The theory was that he’d wake up in the in-between wearing whatever he wore in the temporal plane, so he’d been careful.

He’d picked his favorite jeans - the ones with worn holes and paint stains - and an old hoodie that still smelled like the workshop if he closed his eyes. He was barefoot, because that was his favorite way to be in the workshop, and the workshop was his favorite place when they were dating.

Shuri got his attention. “Steve, it’s time.”

He lay down fully, and let her slip the mask over his nose and mouth. She counted backwards from 10 and he felt a pinch and then…

And then he was on a couch.

He was on a couch, under a blanket, and AC/DC was playing loudly. He cracked open his eyes to see Tony with a welding helmet on. His arc reactor put the year around 2013, but before the Mandarin, which meant that in their timeline, they were still flirting and not fucking.

He blinked open his eyes and saw that things were the same, but different. DUM-E was there, but both FRIDAY's and JARVIS’ voices were chattering back and forth. Sunlight streamed in from the skylights, and everything smelled like pizza - but the air felt calmer than it ever did before.

“Captain Rogers,” JARVIS intoned, “we have been waiting for you.”

Tony flipped up his helmet, and Steve saw the face he’d dreamed about for so long. Afraid to move, Steve simply blinked, and Tony started to laugh. “I knew Shuri would figure it out. I knew she would.”

Steve just kept blinking and found tears forming. Because this Tony was lightyears ahead of him, just like the human one had been, Tony made his way to the couch and flopped down - like he had a million times before.

“There’s a lot to talk about, but here’s the highlights: this can be permanent, I created this space for us, out of my dreams when I was still alive. When I died, I woke up in a room with a few doors and was told to pick the one I wanted to live in until the next phase. I don’t know the next phase, all I knew was that the only place I wanted to be was with you and this was the only place I could do that, so I’ve been here ever since,” Tony said.

“And you’ve been waiting?” Steve croaked out.

“Oh, Steve, sweetheart,” Tony said, tenderness in his voice. He wrapped his body around Steve’s and whispered, “I’d wait forever for you.”

“I’m so sorry, Tony, I -”

“Shh,” Tony said. “I know you are. I am too. We’ll do that all later. Time means nothing and everything, and we have as much as we want.”

Steve knew. He knew in that moment what the rest of his existence would be, and with no regret at all, he tapped the button on his waist that told Shuri what he wanted as he pulled Tony into a kiss.

* * *

In Wakanda, Shuri smiled through her tears. “Time of death, 7:04am. Be happy, Steven and Tony. Be happy.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the story, I'd love to know! Kudos and comments are life giving. If you're not sure what to say in the comment, know that I take keyboard smashes and emojis as full love. So, if you liked it more than just a kudos, dropping a heart emoji is great and I thank you in advance.
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/betheflame1) or [Tumblr](http://betheflame.tumblr.com) for more on these yahoos. You can also submit prompts and cajole me into writing faster - it usually works. If you're on Discord, I'm definitely there, too, and probably hanging in the [Put on the Suit Stony Server ](https://discord.gg/z5WSqbS) or the [STB Enthusiasts Stuckony](https://discord.gg/ktXHUb4) one.  
>   
> Oh! And FestiveFerret and I have a [fandom podcast](http://www.podonthesuit.com) if you're so inclined.  
>   
> 


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